Religious symbolism and iconography

Religious symbolism and iconography, respectively, the basic and often complex artistic forms and gestures used as a kind of key to convey religious concepts and the visual, auditory, and kinetic representations of religious ideas and events. Symbolism and iconography have been utilized by all the religions of the world.

Detail of Religion, a mural in lunette from the Family and Education series by Charles …

Since the 20th century some scholars have stressed the symbolical character of religion over attempts to present religion rationally. The symbolic aspect of religion is even considered by some scholars of psychology and mythology to be the main characteristic of religious expression. Scholars of comparative religions, ethnologists, and psychologists have gathered and interpreted a great abundance of material on the symbolical aspects of religion, especially in relation to Eastern and local religions. In recent Christiantheology and liturgical practices another revaluation of religious symbolical elements has occurred.

The importance of symbolical expression and of the pictorial presentation of religious facts and ideas has been confirmed, widened, and deepened both by the study of local cultures and religions and by the comparative study of world religions. Systems of symbols and pictures that are constituted in a certain ordered and determined relationship to the form, content, and intention of presentation are believed to be among the most important means of knowing and expressing religious facts. Such systems also contribute to the maintenance and strengthening of the relationships between human beings and the realm of the sacred or holy (the transcendent, spiritual dimension). The symbol is, in effect, the mediator, presence, and real (or intelligible) representation of the holy in certain conventional and standardized forms.

The nature of religious symbols and symbolization

The word symbol comes from the Greek symbolon, which means contract, token, insignia, and a means of identification. Parties to a contract, allies, guests, and their host could identify each other with the help of the parts of the symbolon. In its original meaning the symbol represented and communicated a coherent greater whole by means of a part. The part, as a sort of certificate, guaranteed the presence of the whole and, as a concise meaningful formula, indicated the larger context. The symbol is based, therefore, on the principle of complementation. The symbol object, picture, sign, word, and gesture require the association of certain conscious ideas in order to fully express what is meant by them. To this extent it has both an esoteric and an exoteric, or a veiling and a revealing, function. The discovery of its meaning presupposes a certain amount of active cooperation. As a rule, it is based on the convention of a group that agrees upon its meaning.

Concepts of symbolization

In the historical development and present use of the concepts of symbolization, a variety of categories and relationships must necessarily be differentiated. Religious symbols are used to convey concepts concerned with humanity’s relationship to the sacred or holy (e.g., the cross in Christianity) and also to his social and material world (e.g., the dharmachakra, or wheel of the law, of Buddhism). Other nonreligious types of symbols achieved increasing significance in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially those dealing with human beings’ relationship to and conceptualization of the material world. Rational, scientific-technical symbols have assumed an ever increasing importance in modern science and technology. They serve partly to codify and partly to indicate, abbreviate, and make intelligible the various mathematical (e.g., =, equality; ≡, identity; ∼, similarity; ‖, parallel; or <, less than), physical (e.g., ∼, alternating current), biological (e.g., ♂, male; ♀, female), and other scientific and technical relationships and functions. This type of “secularized” symbol is rooted, to a degree, in the realm of religious symbolism. It functions in a manner similar to that of the religious symbol by associating a particular meaning with a particular sign. The rationalization of symbols and symbolical complexes as well as the rationalization of myth have been in evidence at least since the Renaissance.

Deposition from the Cross, relief sculpture by Benedetto Antelami, 1178; in the cathedral of …

The concept of the religious symbol also embraces an abundantly wide variety of types and meanings. Allegory, personifications, figures, analogies, metaphors, parables, pictures (or, more exactly, pictorial representations of ideas), signs, emblems as individually conceived, artificial symbols with an added verbal meaning, and attributes as a mark used to distinguish certain persons all are formal, historical, literary, and artificial categories of the symbolical. If one looks for a definable common denominator for the various types of symbols, one could perhaps choose the term “meaning picture” or “meaning sign” to best describe the revealing and at the same time the concealing aspects of religious experience. The symbol (religious and other) is intended primarily for the circle of the initiated and involves the acknowledgment of the experience that it expresses. The symbol is not, however, kept hidden in meaning; to some extent, it even has a revelatory character (i.e., it goes beyond the obvious meaning for those who contemplate its depths). It indicates the need for communication and yet conceals the details and innermost aspects of its contents.

Varieties and meanings associated with the term symbol

Different forms and levels of the experience of and relationship to reality (both sacred and profane) are linked with the concepts of symbol, sign, and picture. The function of the symbol is to represent a reality or a truth and to reveal them either instantaneously or gradually. The relationship of the symbol to a reality is conceived of as somewhat direct and intimate and also as somewhat indirect and distant. The symbol is sometimes identified with the reality that it represents and sometimes regarded as a pure transparency of it. As a “sign” or “picture” the representation of the experience of and relationship to reality has either a denotative or a truly representative meaning. The doctrine of the eucharistic (sacramental) presence of Christ in the teachings of Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and the Protestant Reformers concretely demonstrate the various and extensive levels of symbolical understandings. These levels extend all the way from the concept of physical identity in the transubstantiation theory of Roman Catholicism (in which the substance of breadness and wineness is believed to be changed into the body and blood of Christ, though the properties of the elements remain the same) through Martin Luther’sReal Presence theory (in which Christ is viewed as present, though the question of how is not answered because the question of why he is present is considered more important), and Huldrych Zwingli’s sign (symbolic or memorial) theory, to the concept of mere allusion. The concept of the symbol, however, includes all these interpretations.

Furthermore, a symbol in its intermediary function has aspects of epistemology (theory of knowing) and ontology (theory of being). As a means of knowledge, it operates in a characteristically dialectical process of veiling and revealing truths. It fulfills an interpretative function in the process of effectively apprehending and comprehending religious experience. In doing so, the word, or symbol—with its meaning, contextual use, relationship to other types of religious expression, and interpretative connection with the various forms of sign, picture, gesture, and sound—plays an important part in the process of symbolical perception and reflection. Although the symbol is an abbreviation, as a means of communication it brings about—through its connection with the object of religion and with the world of the transcendent—not only an interpretative knowledge of the world and a conferral or comparison of meaning to life but also a means of access to the sacred reality. It may possibly even lead to a fusion, or union of some sort, with the divine. To this extent, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the liturgical and ritualistic mystery in Christianity—with its many symbolical signs, pictorial representations, significative actions, interpretative words, and various levels of approach to the divine reality—is an example of a highly developed form of a complex symbolic action. Here, the concept of analogy is important; the symbol functions in these ways because it has an analogous cognitional as well as existential relationship to that which it signifies.

The symbolic process

To trace the origin, development, and differentiation of a symbol is a complicated process. Almost every symbol and picture in religion is at first either directly or indirectly connected with the sense impressions and objects of the human environment. Many are derived from the objects of nature, and others are artificially constructed in a process of intuitive perception, emotional experience, or rational reflection. In most cases, the constructions are again related to objects in the world of sense perception. A tendency toward simplification, abbreviation into signs, and abstraction from sense objects is quite evident, as well as a tendency to concentrate several processes into a single symbol. A good example of this last tendency may be seen in ancient Christian portrayals of the triumphant cross before a background of a star-filled heaven that appear in the apses of many basilican churches. In these representations the Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, exaltation, and Transfiguration of Christ are joined to apocalyptic concepts (centring on sudden interventions by God into history) inherent in the doctrine of the Last Judgment. An excellent example of such an apse mosaic is to be found in the S. Apollinare in Classe, near Ravenna (in Italy). On the other hand, there is a tendency to accumulate, combine, multiply, and differentiate symbolical statements for the same thought or circumstance, as seen, for example, on the sarcophagi (stone coffins) of late Christian antiquity—especially in Ravenna. Here, the same idea is symbolically expressed in various manners—e.g., by means of persons, objects, animals, and signs, all appearing side by side.

The forms and figures of symbolical thought can change into exaggerations and rank growths, however, and lead to transformations and hybrids—figures with several heads, faces, or hands—as exemplified in the statues and pictorial representations of the deities of India (e.g., the multiarmed goddess Kali) and of Slavic tribes (e.g., the four-headed Suantevitus). The meaning of individual symbols can change and even be perverted. The lamb that in ancient Christian art symbolizes Christ may also symbolize the Apostles or humankind in general. The dove may symbolize the Holy Spirit or the human soul. The wheel or circle can symbolize the universe, the sun, or even the underworld. The encyclopaedic Christian allegorism (symbolism) of the Middle Ages offers many interesting examples, as noted in the writings of St. Isidore of Sevilla, a 6th- to 7th-century Spanish theologian, and Rabanus Maurus, a 9th-century German abbot and encyclopaedist.

The foundations of the symbolization process lie in the areas of the conscious and the unconscious, of experience and thought, and of sense perception, intuition, and imagination. From these arises the structure of religious symbolism. Sensation and physiological and psychological processes participate in the formation of the symbol structure. Extraordinary religious experiences and conditions, visions, ecstasy, and religious delirium brought about by intoxication, hallucinogenics, or drugs that produce euphoria and changes in consciousness must also be taken into consideration. The symbol itself, however, is intended as an objective concentration of experiences of the transcendent world and not as a subjective construction of a personally creative process. In cultic and mystical visions and trances, the forms and processes of the external world and of the religious tradition are condensed and combined with mythical images and historical events and take on a life of their own. The process of rational conceptualization and structuralization, however, also plays a part in the origin and development of many symbols. There is a correlation between sense perception, imagination, and the work of the intellect.

Symbols in the religious consciousness

The formation of religious symbols that occur when unconscious ideas are aroused or when a process of consciousness occurs is principally a matter of religious experience. Such symbols usually become intellectual acquisitions, and, as religious concepts are further elaborated upon, the symbols may even finally become subjects of major theological questions. In Christian theology, for example, summaries of dogmatic statements of faith are called symbols (e.g., the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasiancreeds and the confessional books of Protestantism, such as the Augsburg Confession of Lutheranism). This particular use of the term symbol is exceptional, however.

In the development of the symbol, religious experience, understanding, and logic are all connected, but each places different accents on the individual categories and species of symbol. Occasionally, religion is regarded as the origin and the product of certain established (or fundamental) symbols. In such cases the outcome of the process of the structuralization of religious consciousness would then be the establishment of a symbol that is generally applicable to a particular historical species of religion. Conversely, one could ask whether the experience and establishment of an individual or collective symbol by a creative personality or a community is not itself the establishment of a religion. If so, the classical symbol that was developed at the time of the foundation of any one particular religion would then be constitutive for its origin and further development (e.g., the taiji or the combination of the opposite yet complementary forces of yin and yang for the Chinese, the cross for the Christian religion). In any event, the symbol belongs to the essence of humanity’s coming to religious consciousness and to the formation of history’s institutional religions. It plays a fundamental and continual part in the further growing of such religions and in the mental horizons of their followers.

Taiji depicting the opposed yet complementary forces of yin …

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The relation of the symbol and the sacred

Symbols as the incarnate presence of the sacred or holy

Whatever the experience of reality that lies behind the religious symbol may be, it is above all the experience of the sacred or holy, which belongs essentially to any concept of religion. The historical study of religions has shown that it is fundamentally the symbol that mediates and forms for the religious consciousness the reality and the claim of the holy. Religion is a system of relationships, a system of reciprocal challenges and responses, the principal correspondents of which are the sacred or holy and humanity. Though there are many forms of experience in which the sacred or holy is distinctly known and felt, the experience is often acquired in worship, in which this system of relationships is realized and continually renewed and in which the sacred or holy supposedly makes itself present. The details of worship serve to objectify and regulate in a perceptual and material manner the presupposed presence of the sacred or holy, of which the symbol and the picture are intended to be its materialization. In its material manifestation the sacred or holy is adapted to the perceptual and conceptual faculties of human beings. Viewed from the aspect of its holiness, the symbol originates in a process of mediation and revelation, and every encounter with it is supposed to bring about a renewed actualization and a continual remembrance of this revelation.

The actualization of the presence of the holy by means of symbolic representation can, in extreme cases, lead to an identification of the physical manifestations with the spiritual power symbolized in them. The symbol, or at least an aspect of it, is then viewed as the incarnated presence of the holy. The sacred stone, animal, plant, and drum and the totem symbol or the picture of ancestors all represent the sacred or holy and guarantee its presence and efficacy. The origin of many such symbols clearly indicates the identity that was presumed to have existed between the symbol and the sacred or holy. The Greek god Dionysus as a bull, the Greek goddess Demeter as an ear of corn, the Roman god Jupiter as a stone, the Syrian god Tammuz-Adonis as a plant, and the Egyptian god Horus as a falcon all are viewed as manifestations of the deities that were originally identified with these respective objects of nature.

Symbols as indicators of the sacred or holy

The symbol is understood to have a referential character. It refers to the reality of the sacred or holy that is somewhat and somehow present. When the symbol is an indicator of the sacred or holy, a certain distance exists between them, and there is no claim that the two are identical. Short of actual identification, various degrees of intensity exist between the symbol and the spiritual reality of the sacred or holy. The symbol is a transparency, a signal, and a sign leading to the sacred or holy. The objects, gestures, formulas, and words used in meditation—for example, Buddhist mudras (gestures), pratimas (images), mantras (magic formulas)—and in mysticism—for example, the crystal or the shoemaker’s ball in the contemplative experience of Jakob Böhme, a 16th- to 17th-century German cobbler and mystic; the navel in Omphalicism (a method [called Hesychasm] of contemplating the navel in order to experience the divine light and glory in medieval Greek Christian mysticism of the monks of Mount Athos); and the pictures of the Deity in the language of Hindu, Islamic, and medieval Christian mysticism—all of these are truly symbols, but nonetheless they have at most only an indirect mediating relationship to the divine, a purely noetic (intellectually abstract) significance with regard to the reality and presence of the sacred or holy.

Symbols of sacred time and space

The symbolical forms of representation of the sacred or holy are to be understood as references to or transparencies of the sacred or holy. The sacred manifests itself in time and space, so that time and space themselves become diaphanous indications of the holy. The holy place—a shrine, forest grove, temple, church, or other area of worship—is symbolically marked off as a sacred area. The signs, such as a stake, post, or pillar, that delimit the area themselves are endowed with sacred symbolic meanings, which often can be noted by their particular designs. The ground plan of the sacred building and its orientation, walls, roof, and arches are all utilized to symbolize the sacred or holy. Prehistoric places of worship—e.g., Stonehenge (in England) and other megaliths of Europe and the shrines and holy places of ancient Egypt, Babylon, China, and Mexico—were invested with symbolical meanings.

Sacred places are often pictorial reflections of the universe and its design and partake of its holiness. The domes of Christian churches are symbols of heaven, the altar a symbol of Christ, the Holy of Holies of the Temple of Jerusalem a symbol of the Lord, the Holy of Holies in Shintō shrines (honden) a symbol of the divinity, and the prayerniches in mosques a symbol of the presence of Allah. In many instances shoes may not be worn on holy ground (e.g., Shintō temples), and hands and feet are to be washed before entering into a holy place. The woodwork of demolished Shintō shrines, when taken to private homes, makes the sacred or holy present in the homes of pious Japanese families.

Time as a transparent symbol of the sacred may be represented by means of the cycle of the sacred year and its high points—e.g., New Year’s (as in ancient Near Eastern religions), the times of sowing and reaping, and the solstices and equinoxes. Or the lapse of time may be represented in signs and pictures. Cosmic, mythical, and liturgical time and destiny are portrayed, for example, in the Buddhist symbol of the wheel of life, bhavachakra, with its causal chain of human deeds and succession of existences, entwined by the claws of a devouring monster; the figures of Aion (Time) in late Greco-Roman and Persian antiquity show a figure with a winged lion’s head standing on a globe and encircled by a snake. Time itself, its course, division, and fixed points, is both an allusion and the bearer and mediator of the sacred or holy.

Ceremonial and ritualistic objects as indicators or bearers of the sacred or holy

Liturgical and ceremonial objects can also indicate or lead to the sacred or holy. Not only holy pictures and symbols (e.g., the cross in Christianity or the mirror in Japanese Shintō) but also lights, candles, lamps, vessels for holy materials, liturgical books, holy writings, vestments, and sacred ornaments are indicators of the sacred or holy. Liturgical vestments and masks are intended to transform the wearer, to remove him from the realm of the this-worldly, and to adapt him to the sphere of the sacred or holy; they help him to come into contact with the divine—for example, by obscuring his sexual characteristics. The vestments may be covered with symbols, such as those worn by Arctic shamans (traditional healers with psychic transformation abilities). They are signs of the function of the wearer and his relationships to the sacred or holy and to the profane world. Such vestments are frequently derived from those of rulers or from ceremonial court dress—e.g., Japanese Shintō and Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. They are supposed to create a fitting atmosphere of solemnity and dignity. In Western Christianity, the liturgical vestments have a very specific symbolism: the alb (a tunic) symbolizes purity of heart; the stole, the raiment of immortality; and the chasuble (an outer eucharistic, or communion, vestment), the yoke of Christ. The liturgical vestments of the Eastern Christian churches have a similar symbolism. The ritual headdress and the crown express the sacred dignity of the wearer. The vestments of the various religious orders (Oriental and Occidental) express the holiness of the members of the community, their nearness to the sacred or holy, and the significance of religious life for them. In the reception ritual of Jainism and Buddhism, the monastic vestments are put on as a sign of an entrance in a new state of life. This ritual in Jainism resembles that of a wedding ceremony. The taking over of the monastic garb is an essential part of becoming a sadhu. The monks of the Jainistic Shvetambara (“White Robed”) sect wear five objects (e.g., shells) as symbols of the five monastic virtues. In early Christianity the white baptismal vestment was a symbol of rebirth, new life, and innocence.

Shintō priests wearing the traditional shōzoku during the festival of One …

Paolo Koch—Rapho/Photo Researchers

Other relations between the symbol and the sacred

The sacred or holy as represented or manifested in the symbol has, generally speaking, a sanctifying function (elevating one to a closer relationship to the sacred or holy) and an exorcising function (decreasing or eliminating those aspects that hinder one’s relationship to the sacred or holy). Remembrance (anamnēsis) and imitation (mimēsis) are the analogous and associative means of representing the reality and indestructibility of the sacred or holy and its power, which defends, protects from injury, bans evil, and guarantees salvation. Symbolic signs and pictures (e.g., masks; sex, animal, or plant symbols, such as the skulls or horns of animals) are placed on houses and sacred places to make present the saving and sanctifying power of the sacred or holy.